Shruthi is a post doctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds and the impact lead for the MS Domestic Violence and Abuse Research Initiative. Her primary focus is on generating and pursuing knowledge exchange and impact activities related to victim support for people with multiple sclerosis and disabled people more broadly, both within clinical settings and beyond.
Her research interests lie at the intersections of gender-based violence, disability, and critical feminist scholarship. Shruthi has an academic background in social work with a specialization in Criminology and Justice, and she has practical experience working with survivors of violence and abuse. She completed her PhD in Social Policy at the University of Bristol, where her doctoral research explored how disabled women who are survivors of violence and abuse comprehend and pursue their ideas of justice. Her work integrates insights from victim/survivor knowledge with theoretical frameworks and practical applications, contributing to policy and practice development.
Suzanne Britt
Sue qualified as a midwife in 2002 and has since worked across the midwifery sector. In 2011, she completed her MSc and worked as a research midwife at Nottingham University Hospital, subsequently moving into a midwifery education career as an Assistant Professor at Nottingham University. She specialized in public health, perinatal mental health, and infant feeding and received global and local recognition for her teaching. Academically, Sue worked as Safeguarding Lead and Senior Tutor for Midwifery, using knowledge and skills from her clinical roles to support students with welfare and wellbeing concerns. This work, and her midwifery experience, underpins a longstanding interest in supporting victim-survivors of DVA. In 2022, she started a full-time PhD at Nottingham University, focusing on healthcare professional’s responses to DVA in people with MS. Her qualitative study explores the views, perceptions and experiences of a wide range of healthcare professionals working with people with MS, aiming to capture their voices for the development of future resources within the MS-DVA research collaboration.
Kharis Hutchison is a PhD student at the University of Leeds researching the experiences of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) among people with multiple sclerosis. This research, whilst focusing on lived experience, will consider the social causes of DVA and explore how support structures can be improved for people who are at risk of or are experiencing DVA to limit distress and focus on societal change. This PhD is conducted alongside a second PhD at the University of Nottingham. Together, the projects have provided integral data for the MS and Domestic Violence and Abuse Research Initiative.
Kharis began her academic career at St Andrews University as an undergraduate Geography student. Her interest in human geography led her to complete an MSc in Equality and Human Rights at the University of Glasgow in 2021, where she developed an interest in disability studies. Kharis moved to Leeds to begin her PhD in 2021 with her supervisors Andrea Hollomotz and Helen Ford.
Andrea Hollomotz is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Beginning her career in social work and social care, Andrea transitioned to academia seeking to help reduce disabled people’s increased risk to experiencing or committing interpersonal violence.
Her research interests revolve around areas which fuse crime and criminology with disability studies, including learning disabilities and sexual “vulnerability” and disability and interpersonal violence. Andrea has since worked with the Cabinet Office’s Disability Unit in partnership with Disability Rights UK and is a Fair Access to Justice Institute Fellow.
Andrea is the mentor for the MS and domestic violence research initiative at the University of Leeds. She co-supervises one of the PhD projects commissioned as part of this research, which explores the experiences of domestic abuse among women with MS. The project seeks to shed light on these experiences and foregrounds women’s voices to ensure the development of positive and relevant impact strategies within the investigation.
Professor Helen Ford is a consultant neurologist specialising in multiple sclerosis (MS) at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Leeds. After completing her neurology training, she was appointed as a consultant neurologist in 1998. She currently leads a multidisciplinary MS team and heads the West Yorkshire MS Treatment Programme.
As an Honorary Clinical Professor of Neurology at the University of Leeds, Professor Ford’s research interests include employment and MS, social determinants of health, clinical trials, development of patient-reported outcome measures, digital interventions to improve self-efficacy and resilience, and kinematic analysis in MS. She serves as the recruitment hub lead for the MS-STAT2 and CHARIOT-MS trials in progressive MS and leads the Yorkshire Hub for the Octopus trial platform.
Professor Ford is also part of a UK research group investigating domestic violence and abuse in MS. She co-supervises a PhD student at Leeds focused on understanding the experiences of female victim survivors with MS and supports post-doctoral research aimed at implementing findings from Leeds and Nottingham into MS practice.
Nikos is a Professor of Neurology at the University of Nottingham and has been a consultant neurologist for 20 years. He completed his PhD in Oxford and has continued his research on MS ever since. Nikos and his research group are based at the University of Nottingham. He is the Chief and Principle Investigator for a number of national and international clinical trials.
Over the years, Nikos has come across many people with MS who have been affected by domestic violence (DV). During the pandemic, when rates of DV spiked for people with MS, Nikos liaised with a wider team and set up this initiative. He now supervises one of the PhD projects involved with this study.
Dr Charley Baker is known for her work in Health Humanities globally. She has specialised in narrative psychiatry, fiction and mental health and is an well known expert in safeguarding, domestic abuse, self harm and suicide and has written and spoken widely about these issues, including looking at creative research methodologies. She is Editor of Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.
Rachel Horne, a journalist and MS patient advocate, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2009. She has written extensively about the disease from a patient’s perspective and has co-authored numerous papers published in prestigious journals, including The BMJ, Neurology, and Nature Reviews Neurology. Rachel is often asked to comment on MS-related issues on various podcasts and has also appeared on BBC Radio Four. In 2022, she established the Rachel Horne Prize for Women's Research in MS, an annual award recognising a female scientist for their outstanding contribution to women’s health-related research in MS.
Through her work examining the intersection of women and MS, Rachel highlighted the lack of information that exists about domestic violence, its prevalence, the forms it takes, and the best ways to support victims/survivors. In 2023, she decided to support this crucial research initiative, aiming to enhance knowledge in this area and significantly improve the understanding and support for women with MS.
